A device (management device) dedicated to management may be mounted in an information processing apparatus. The management device is generally adapted to allow a remote operation for management to monitor the state of hardware installed in the information processing apparatus. The operation for management includes, for example, turning ON/OFF the power and restarting. Since the management device is equipped with such functions, the management device is mounted in most servers which are representative of information processing apparatuses.
An interface specification has been established in order to remotely perform the operation and monitoring of the state of the information processing apparatus. An intelligent platform management interface (IPMI) is the standard interface specification. The IPMI assumes inter-integrated circuit (I2C) as a communication specification. Hereinafter, a management device compatible with the IPMI is referred to as a baseboard management controller (BMC).
In the related art, the BMC is allowed to perform communication only through the I2C by the IPMI. Generally, the BMC is a large scale integration (LSI) component and the state thereof may not be determined from an outer appearance. Therefore, communication using the IPMI becomes the only way to check for the state of the BMC.
Recently, the functions required for the BMC are being increased. Therefore, the scale of a program executed by the BMC is being increased as well.
As the scale of a program is being increased, the possibility of a trouble (e.g., bugs) occurring in the program is increased. The trouble of the program may cause an erroneous operation or freezing of the BMC. When the BMC does not normally operate, the state of a server in which the BMC is mounted may not be checked. Therefore, the server needs to be stopped. However, it is strongly required that the stopping of the server is avoided. Therefore, a necessity of monitoring the BMC itself is being increased in recent years.
The state of the BMC may be checked through the communication using the IPMI. However, an error may be caused in a communication route itself of the I2C, which is used for the communication, or in an interface for communication via the I2C. When the communication is not performed due to the error related with the communication route, it is considered that the BMC is not normally operating, even if the BMC itself is normally operating. As a result, it may be necessary to stop the server. In this regard, it is important to more appropriately cope with the occurrence of an error related with the communication route by monitoring the BMC.
Related techniques are disclosed in, for example, Japanese Laid-Open Patent Publication No. 2008-176682, Japanese Laid-Open Patent Publication No. 2006-215938, and Japanese Laid-Open Patent Publication No. 10-161896.